spoon-feed
Americanverb (used with object)
verb
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to feed with a spoon
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to overindulge or spoil
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to provide (a person) with ready-made opinions, judgments, etc, depriving him of original thought or action
Etymology
Origin of spoon-feed
First recorded in 1605–15
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
As usual, Wiseman doesn’t spoon-feed us details of who’s who and where’s where; he trusts us to get our bearings over an effortlessly engrossing four hours.
From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 29, 2023
"I wanted someone to spoon-feed me information in a format that was easy."
From BBC • Nov. 17, 2021
Her Little Sisters of the Sick Poor are prime examples, as the name suggests: They spoon-feed the toothless, comfort the grieving, scrub floors, clean wounds, change diapers, empty bedpans.
From New York Times • Sep. 12, 2021
By plastering the walls with imagery as grandiose as Westminster Abbey and as mundane as fading green wallpaper, these projections spoon-feed scene setting that should be left to the set design and audiences’ imaginations.
From Washington Post • Feb. 13, 2020
Better let them go to hell in their own way than attempt to spoon-feed them.
From Ireland as It Is And as It Would be Under Home Rule by Buckley, Robert John
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.